My Charity System made me too OP

Kaelith's step was not just movement—it was decree.

The arena floor groaned, plates of obsidian grinding as if dragged into alignment by sheer authority. The space between them collapsed; air fled, sound warped, and even the crowd's roar became a muffled echo, pulled under the tidal force of his approach.

Leon's lungs tightened—not from fear, but from the density of will pressing against him.

This wasn't just a strike. It was a statement: There is no pace but mine.

And yet… that was exactly what Leon had come to break.

The Fifth Pulse answered—not as jagged shards this time, but as a spiral.

Fractures folding into one another, stutter-beats looping back, each cycle stealing just a sliver of Kaelith's momentum. The warlord's step still landed—but it was a half-beat late, the force bleeding sideways into the fractured rhythm Leon wove.

Kaelith's heel cracked the stone, but the intended quake staggered, rippling off-balance.

Leon slid along that misstep, turning it into an opening.

The Fifth Pulse thrummed through his body, through the ground, through the very edges of Kaelith's Core—and then snapped.

Pressure rebounded. Not enough to crush the warlord, but enough to make him recalculate.

Kaelith's grin didn't fade. If anything, the gleam in his eyes sharpened—predator recognizing prey that could bite back.

"Fracturing my step…" He flexed his shoulders, Sovereign Core flaring again. "You've chosen the most dangerous road, Echo-Breaker."

Leon's reply was almost a whisper, but it carried.

"And you've chosen to walk it with me."

They moved in the same heartbeat—Kaelith bringing the full storm of a Sovereign Throne, Leon threading chaos through its every beat.

The air between them became a battlefield of time itself, every step and counterstep deciding who ruled the moment.

The first collision was not a clash of bodies, but of worlds.

Kaelith's Sovereign Core surged outward in a solid wall—unyielding, absolute—while Leon's fractured Fifth Pulse met it as a twisting vortex, breaking and re-forming in impossible patterns. The air itself shuddered between them, neither force yielding, the space vibrating like the strings of an overdrawn bow.

Then, inevitability struck.

Kaelith's fist cut through the storm, a hammer of pure authority aimed to crush the spiral. Leon didn't meet it head-on—he pivoted his rhythm half a beat early, redirecting the force into the spiral's curve. The impact ripped a shockwave through the arena, the obsidian floor splintering outward in jagged lines.

Both men slid back—Kaelith a single measured step, Leon three ragged ones.

The crowd erupted. It was the first time anyone had forced the warlord to give ground.

Kaelith's nostrils flared as he steadied himself. Blood dripped from his split brow, tracing the scars along his temple. His voice came low, each word carrying the iron weight of his will."Once is defiance. Twice is war."

Leon's chest heaved, the Fifth Pulse still spinning in wild, broken loops inside him. He raised his guard, not to defend, but to invite."Then let's finish the war."

Kaelith stepped in again—not the slow decree of before, but a hunting stride, the kind that erased hesitation. Leon matched him, spiral tightening, the next heartbeat promising collision.

Only one of them would own the moment to come.

The third collision was nothing like the first two—

it was faster, closer, hungrier.

Kaelith's aura detonated, the Sovereign Core condensing into a crushing singularity that pulled Leon toward him like a collapsing star. Every movement in that pull was a trap—every opening was bait. The warlord's eyes burned with the certainty of a predator who had chosen the kill moment.

Leon didn't resist the pull.

He let it take him.

Half a heartbeat before impact, the Fifth Pulse fractured again—not outwards, but inward. The spiral folded into itself, absorbing Kaelith's momentum just enough for Leon to slip past his guard. His palm, wrapped in golden destruction light and reverberating echoes, slammed against Kaelith's ribcage.

Absolute Return.

The force Kaelith had unleashed on Leon came roaring back at him, amplified and reshaped by the Fifth Pulse's jagged rhythm. Bone groaned, armor cracked, and the shockwave tore up the arena floor in a screaming arc.

Kaelith staggered—

but he did not fall.

His left hand shot out, clamping around Leon's forearm before the younger fighter could pull away. His grin was blood and defiance.

"You think I can't return it twice?"

The Sovereign Core flared again, not as a wall this time, but as a spear, driving pure force back through Leon's arm. Pain flared white-hot in Leon's shoulder; his spiral stuttered for the first time in the fight.

That was all Kaelith needed.

The warlord stepped in, his other fist already arcing—ready to end it in a single, merciless strike.

Leon's only chance was to break rhythm entirely… or be broken by it.

Kaelith's step landed like a world falling into place—

not just power, but inevitability.

The shockwave ripped across the arena, the stone beneath Leon fracturing outward in a perfect radial pattern. Space buckled, air imploded, and the very concept of "forward" seemed to drag toward Kaelith's advancing presence.

Leon's feet skidded an inch—one inch—before he slammed his own heel down, the Fifth Pulse detonating through the broken lattice like a heartbeat gone mad.

Glass-shard fragments of rhythm spun around them, each one a splinter of momentum, a fragment of authority ripped from Kaelith's steps. Leon seized them—pulling one, pushing another—until the perfect inevitability of Kaelith's advance stuttered.

The warlord's second step did not fall in rhythm with the first.

The crowd felt it—an off-beat, a wrongness, like a drum that skipped.

Kaelith felt it too, his brow twitching just enough to betray the shift.

Leon didn't give him time to fix it.

He surged forward, fracturing the pulse again, each movement a refusal—refusal to be dictated to, refusal to accept the path laid before him.

Their clash became a storm of collision and recoil—Kaelith hammering down with raw Sovereign might, Leon answering with jagged, inverted beats that turned weight into recoil and flow into stutter.

Then—Kaelith's hand shot forward, not a strike but a seize, the kind of grab that didn't just aim for the body, but for the will.

Leon's answer was the same as it had been since the first step.

"No."

The Fifth Pulse detonated again—

And this time, it wasn't just Kaelith's rhythm that broke.

The very arena floor beneath them split, the central circle collapsing into a jagged, spiraling sinkhole of shattered stone.

Kaelith laughed, even as they both fell with it.

"You're going to tear this Throne apart, boy."

Leon's gaze stayed locked on him, unblinking.

"That's the point."